At present, in the vacuum micro-electronic field, field emissive device has shown wide application prospects and has attracted much attention of the research institutes home and abroad in the fields of lighting and display. Its operating principle is as follows: in vacuum environment, forward voltage is applied to field emissive arrays (FEAs) to form an accelerating field by the anode; then electrons emitted by the cathode is used to bombard the luminescent material on the anode plate after acceleration so as to give out light. The field emissive device has a broad operating temperature range (−40° C.˜80° C.), short response time (<1 ms) and simple structure. Besides, it can save electricity, thus meeting the demand of green environmental protection. Some materials such as fluorescent powders, luminescent glasses and luminescent films can be used as the luminescent materials of the filed emissive device. However, low luminous efficiency is the substantive problem for all such materials, which greatly limits the application of the field emissive device, especially its application in the lighting field.
Surface plasmon (SP) is one kind of wave that travels along the interface between metal and medium, the amplitude of which decays exponentially with its distance away from the interface. When the surface structure of the metal is changed, the properties, dispersion relation, excitation mode and coupling effect of the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) will change greatly. The electromagnetic field induced by the SPPs can not only limit the travel of the wave in sub-wavelength structure, but also yield and control the electromagnetic radiation from optical frequency to microwave region, so as to achieve the active control of light propagation. The excitation of SPPs will increase the optical state density and enhance the spontaneous radiation rate so that the internal quantum efficiency is greatly increased to help the existing various solid state luminescent devices get rid of the difficulty of low luminous efficiency, which will promote a new type of luminescent device with ultrahigh brightness and high-speed operation.